Previous DailyTech stories have detailed recent cooling experienced by the planet, and highlighted some of the scientists currently predicting extended global cooling. Even the UN IPCC has stated that world temperatures may continue to decline, if only briefly.

Now, an expert in geophysics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico has added his voice to the fray. Victor Manuel Velasco Herrera, a researcher at UNAM's Institute of Geophysics, has predicted an imminent period of cooling intense enough to be called a small ice age.

Speaking to a crowd at a conference at the Center for Applied Sciences and Technological Development, Herrera says the sun can both cool and warm the planet. Variations in solar activity, he says, are causing changes in the Earth's climate.

"So that in two years or so, there will be a small ice age that lasts from 60 to 80 years", he said. "The most immediate result will be drought." Herrera says satellite temperature data indicates this cooling may have already begun.

Recent increases in glacier mass in the Andes, Patagonia, and Canada were given as further evidence of an upcoming cold spell.

Herrera also described the predictions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as "erroneous". According to Herrera, their forecasts “are incorrect because are only based on mathematical models which do not include [factors such as] solar activity".

Herrera pointed to the so-called "Little Ice Age" which peaked in the 17th century, as a previous cooling event caused by solar fluctuations.

Herrera made his remarks at UNAM, located in Mexico City, is the oldest university on the North American continent.

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How global warming is an even bigger threat as it has been minimized by the current Maunder Minimum? That we won't see otherwise obvious increases until the Minimum is negated and then the warming trend will be even more catastrophically along its exponentially increasing scale? Sorry to not have the name of this video, it was on PBS in Cleveland Ohio last weekend later. I didn't watch it for long for obvious reasons... Did anyone else catch this?And this is supposedly scientific theory.....

Here's the issue. If solar activity has been able to effect substantial climate change in a period in which solar insolation levels have not appreciably varied, then that means the solar variability index has been understated. That in turn means that climate sensitivity to CO2 has been grossly overstated.

Remember that direct calculation of CO2's heat-trapping effects yield results too small to be dangerous. The cataclismic scenarios come from positive-feedback mechanisms, postulated to align the data with the observed amount of warming.